Frustratingly, no information on the edition size for Han or the two Sandtroopers. Maybe one of the staff can tweak the good folks over there for that information. Or should I just haul out my press badge and ask

There won't be any news on the edition sizes of those for a while. These items have only been listed through Diamond for a few weeks, so most likely Gentle Giant hasn't determined the edition size yet. They base the edition sizes on the orders.

Jeff makes very valid points. Start with and exclusive figure, add in the clamshell and then add in the whole army building culture that's pervasive in the collecting community and it's no wonder that the Target exclusive Clone Trooper has been so hot. We only have ourselves to blame for the situation, I think. It was only a matter of time before both Hasbro and an exclusive retailer decided that the army builders were ripe for the picking.

It retails for $9.99. I've yet to get one myself, but I've been very happy with the Container Stores storage boxes which I use for some loose basic figures.

As for the Emporer/Darth Sidious...no, they have not made one in the mini-bust line yet. However, with the character playing a much more prominent role in REVENGE OF THE SITH, I can't see why Darth Sidious might not get included in this line in the near future.

I really think the sales have been phenomenal, I have seen the pegs replenished at my local Target at least 10 times already...I'm serious too, they will dwindle down to 3-4 per peg and then boom, restocked full and repeat

That's one of the great things about Target. They have probably THE best inventory management around. They keep track of sales not only on a day-to-day basis, but they check their stock levels 2 times during the day as well. As a result they manage their stock much more efficiently than TRU or WalMart. It also helps keep their stock as current as possible.

After standing amongst literally hundreds of people openly talking about buying/selling C3 exclusives last week just to make a few extra bucks, I hear ya' Jess. That was rather disgusting, and one of the few disappointments with the convention there.

I hear this, and heard it WAY too many times at C3. When I finally got up to the registers at the C3 store on Wednesday there was a guy smiling and laughing about how it was all "money in the bank" or something. What a dick. Also, what a fool.

Think about it just from the standpoint of being at Celebration 3. You spent $100+ to get into the show, and most likely spent one entire day on line to get into the C3 store. So it's costing you 25% of your admission right off the bat. Then factor in your time spent on line. 7 hours in my case. In my line of work I do alright when it comes to hourly pay. But let's say for the sake of argument that you make double the minimum wage and you get to maybe $10 an hour. So right there, before you've spent a dime in the store, your admission and time have cost you in excess of $100. THEN you still have to fork over $18 per figure if you want one in a Star Case, and you would be foolish not to get the maximum of 4. So those total up to $72.

That brings you to a grand total of approximately $172 in expenses for the 4 Vaders. And that's not even factoring in your travel and lodging expenses. And these fools on eBay think they're actually making money on the C3 Darth Vader? What an utter group of financial morons.

As for the other scalpers, it's all been said before. Try getting a real job guys. Lord knows with the time and expenses you put out there to get a few figures as quickly as possible you cannot be turning anything approaching a profit. You need to be able to do some serious volume to make anything approaching real money. At that point you might as well try to be a legit dealer. Flea markets can't be paying the bills that well.

I had heard that GenCon was not allowing vendors to sell the Vaders at the show (even though I saw a few who were) but they also should have not let people put up signs saying they were buying them either. That just created more of a mess of people waiting to get into the store.

They did the same thing at Celebration 2. While they allowed vendors to buy Jorg Sacul figures, they didn't permit them to resell them at the show.

"I like that Lucas ran with an EU design on these that was established, rather than establishing his own idea on them."

These guys were from the EU? The only image that I had seen of them prior to the film were from comics that had been drawn after the movie was shot in 2003.

Would love to know more.

I'm pretty sure that Joe Corroney showed the Neimoidian Warriors in his HoloNet News series of illustrations. Those appeared in the Star Wars Insider. I'm pretty sure his look for them corresponded with the way they appear in the movie, although I can't find those images on his web site.